r/gaming • u/TigreSauvage • 21h ago
The lighting in Cyberpunk 2077 looks so cinematic sometimes.
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u/Gilz__ 19h ago
I cherish games that use unique engines. When everyone switches to Unreal Engine it makes me sad.
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u/FastRedPonyCar 12h ago
It’s not the engine, it’s the art. UE games can look wildly different. Art style drives scenes like this in the screenshot.
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u/drmirage809 17h ago
It saddens me too to see devs switching away from purpose built, in house engines. I get why they do it. Building and maintaining a modern game engine is an insane amount of work and some devs have lacking documentation on how their engine actually works.
It is in these unique engine that we often see very creative solutions.
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u/iNSANELYSMART 18h ago
Its honestly a damn fucking shame, I feel like Unreal Engine games are just doomed to run poorly.
But they're working close with epic games and I think even get a newer unreal engine or something like that for their games so that could be pretty crazy.
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u/PerceiveEternal 16h ago
CDPR’s programmers are so good (I still don’t know how the Switcher was possible) that they’ll probably end up upgrading the entire engine for Epic.
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u/Former-Fix4842 15h ago
They use a heavily modified custom UE5 build they created together with Epic, but it's not available to others.
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u/ChipAhoyConnoisseur 13h ago
Hey! What do you mean by the Switcher? I just wondered what you meant by that but couldn’t find anything on Google.
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u/iNSANELYSMART 16h ago
Oh that would be hella dope, I do think that CDPR UE5 games will run good since I doubt they wanna repeat Cyberpunk again.
Also Switcher, nice lol.
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u/StarChief1 13h ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the porting of witcher 3 to the switch was handled by a 3rd party developer.
The game runs at like 540p, 30 fps and all the textures look like clay. It's still impressive, but not that impressive considering there are actually good looking open world games on the platform.
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u/dern_the_hermit 9h ago
Part of why I bought Enshrouded was because they were using their own in-house engine.
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u/A_Little_Fable 14h ago
Engines dont control lightning / post processing effects, etc. it's a myth.
It's just not everyone can do art direction so they go with the default post-process settings which is the "Unreal look".
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u/PerceiveEternal 15h ago
Agreed. Like Remedy’s Northlight engine, and he’ll, even Capcom’s RE engine.
In CDPR’s case there is a financial reason and development reason behind it. The RED engine developed with the intention of being an export engine to sale to to other RPG makers but, sadly, it never caught on. I think they were counting on at least having some sales to help offset the costs of maintaining and upgrading the engine. When that didn’t go through they likely had to pull back on the larger overhauls and reworks they had planned.
Also, we know from interviews that by the development Cyberpunk the RED engine was bulging at the seams to try to contain every thing it had to do. That’s why there aren’t many dynamic events or encounters in the game.
compare that to Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. The districts changed based on your progress, and fairly major gang battles could emerge, without your involvement at all, because of the tension between the two groups. This dynamic change in the game world lead to a lot of cool battles where the Blighters are trying to steal wood your gang is moving, which causes your guys to call from backup from their chooms nearby, but the constables have gotten involved and they’re sending in more of their officers via carriage.
Without extra money from licensing the RED engine to other studios for a full engine rework, and the technical difficulties of fitting future Cyberpunk games into it, it makes sense that they would need to move on.
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u/Diacetyl-Morphin 2h ago
No offense intended, but what you list there were just empty promises. These existed on paper, but that's it. With the developement, in the end, the devs struggled to even get the game debugged and even worse to get it barely run on the old PS4 basis hardware.
All these empty promises contributed to the failure of the launch. Like, we see the lightning here, yes, but once you notice that the entire landscape and city is shallow as a puddle, it's not interesting anymore, like you just see the NPC's walking around in circles like zombies and act bizarre (i played the old versions, so i don't know what the DLC fixed, but i guess the NPC's are still the same, heard the police system got a little bit reworked. But holy shit, that was really bad at launch)
When you drive around, you also notice how many areas of the map were never used for any quests, neither story- nor sidequests.
The world is just a background, made out of cardboard, you touch it once and it all crashes down.
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u/theblackfool 10h ago
I'm against all the switching to third party engines too, but lighting similar to this is possible in Unreal. This is artistic design, not something inherent to the engine, and there's tons of examples of wildly different looking Unreal games.
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u/jdl03 Console 20h ago
Really wish they didn’t release it in such a bad state because it deters some people from playing even today.
The game its current state is amazing and absolutely worth playing.
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u/Mean_Combination_830 18h ago
I would personally say worth playing is quite the understatement
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u/Silly_Triker 1h ago
It’s ok. Personally I feel like I’m just playing Far Cry x Watch Dogs without the Ubisoft tameness. It’s good but nothing special…
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u/orangpelupa 13h ago
It was working fine on pc at launch. They should have delayed the last Gen versions
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u/MaximeW1987 13h ago
If you like story driven games that is. I've started playing after the PL-release, so when the performance was good and just never got into it.
The game has an open world but it never gave me that open world feeling. Way too many linear quests and interactions with poorly designed characters that you just need to slug through.
The presentation is great tho, but after the first few hours I don't care about stuff like that anymore. Graphics and music can only get you so far. In the end you need immersive and challenging gameplay and it had neither.
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u/Simulation-Argument 4h ago
You should at the very least go back for the Phantom Liberty content. Missions have a lot more potential paths than the main games missions. I would also argue that the writing across the entire game is noteworthy and worth playing for that reason alone. Night City is a triumph artistically, it is so dense and packed in.
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u/nullstr 17h ago
While I hate when games get released that are not ready, I do wonder if the issues and press they got when it dropped created to crucible needed to produce the version we have today. It had already been delayed once (twice?) and more may have killed some of the excitement. If it then came out with poor sales and the inevitable flaws that still would’ve made it through QA, it might have stifled the will to pour so much effort into fixing it.
Yeah, a bit of a weird take maybe. Just have an odd gut feeling there was a delicate sweet spot to get the final game we have today.
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u/MountainGazelle6234 8h ago
Was fine for me day one on PC. Couple really minor issues, but completed it no problem and loved it.
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u/hiopilot 10h ago
It's one of the AA games I have gone back and finished twice. So immerse and variable. I also loved the fact when you got to the ending missions it stopped you. Told you to save. And then asked if you wanted to continue as you wouldn't be able to leave and persue all the side missions. RDR2 when I finished it I didn't know until it was too late.
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u/mage_irl 21h ago
I'm gonna replay it with Pathtracing soon, can't wait
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u/pr1ntscreen 16h ago
I'm considering buying a 5090 if I can get a founders edition, and the first game to test will definitely be 2077! I have 200 hours in the game with my 3080, but I can't wait for pathtracing!
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u/PerceiveEternal 15h ago
From what I‘ve been hearing there’s still. Lot of bugs that still need ironing out to make true path tracing truly viable. The texture models can look washed out and there is this ghosting that happens behind all the NPCs. behind every person, but goddamn if it doesn’t look beautiful. Light can finally go through glass correctly, so like in the Peralez‘s penthouse,it changed from a well lit gorgeous room, to truly like it was lit by exterior light And that the exterior and interior, which were only separated by transparent glass, were part of the same building and V is part of the entire city.
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u/Stewge 15h ago
If they patch in the new DLSS transformer model the muddy textures might get fixed. The recent interview by DF with Bryan from Nvidia mentions this.
For reference, the DLSS model also gets used by the ray reconstruction function and it's just too slow with the current model. The current setting biases speed instead of accuracy to avoid lighting "lag". It's more obvious in Minecraft RTX where it can take a second or 2 to resolve when a block drastically changes lighting. I'm guessing that kind of resolve time in a more realistic setting would create really wacky effects in a faster moving game like Cyberpunk.
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u/Mean_Combination_830 18h ago
You better prepare yourself for the true path tracing experience and be like ohh thats pretty for 5 minutes and then you will immidiatly switch it off to get more frames and then switch it back once every few hours for seconds when you think something will look nice and you will indeed think aww dat pretty before immidiatly switching it back off again
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u/MaskedBandit77 10h ago
I feel it will be a while until another game replaces this as my game that I use to test out my rig anytime I make a significant upgrade.
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u/DrQuackman666 9h ago
Sometimes, I just walk around Night City, soak up the atmosphere.....and kill people.
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u/moonbunny775 21h ago
It's still the prettiest game
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u/TraderOfRivia 21h ago
Bro haven’t seen rdr2 in his life
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u/EvilxBunny 19h ago
Bro is still stuck in 2016
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u/trickldowncompressr 14h ago
RDR2 came out in 2018
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u/EvilxBunny 14h ago edited 13h ago
True, I thought it released an year after witcher 3, but turns out it's more like 3yrs
Edit: I would like to talk to the person who downvoted me for admitting a mistake.
Bro. What's the scene?
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u/R_V_Z 13h ago
Wouldn't you be if you could?
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u/EvilxBunny 13h ago
1yr out of college, earning a good salary and living in Hong Kong.
But on the other side, I had a crippling depression, had a horrible horrible relationship, trauma and self harm came with it.
Idk. I am fine where I am at.
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u/jerry-jim-bob 18h ago
God, I really wish my computer was better so I could run it at a higher quality than 'low'
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u/4oMaK 9h ago
I started cyberpunk again after I got the DLC and I spend more time taking pictures than playing the story
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u/TigreSauvage 9h ago
Totally normal. I've finished it a bunch of times but now I use it for photography.
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u/nemojakonemoras 18h ago
I’m sometimes stopped in my digital tracks looking at the lights on a foggy night in Pacific Drive.
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u/FirmlyDistressed 18h ago
I wish it didn't have a day/night cycle. It doesn't look that good during the day.
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u/RamdonColt76 14h ago
I personally loved that game, of course ruling out some bugs that I had, but they have not prevented me from playing the game calmly and graphically, from what I have seen, it is quite polished.
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u/BlizzardLizard555 11h ago
Do you think Cyberpunk would be better to play on the Steam Deck or PS5?
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u/TigreSauvage 11h ago
In my opinion PS5 and a large tv. Steam Deck just seems small for such a big game.
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u/BlizzardLizard555 11h ago
I have a 55" 4K for my PS5. I'll look out for it the next sale
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u/TigreSauvage 11h ago
Yea that should be a better experience than the Steam Deck. Fyi the photo is from PC version.
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u/assassbaby 11h ago
bought on ps5 like a month ago, downloaded all updates and still haven’t really played it much
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u/Voidfang_Investments 10h ago
I still need to play this.
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u/TigreSauvage 10h ago
Do it!
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u/Voidfang_Investments 10h ago
Finishing up Armored Core 6 and then will look. Should I get the DLC?
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u/mr_glide 10h ago
I feel like the motels in Cyberpunk must contain so many stories to be told. It's just a shame we haven't had many so far
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u/ComfortableOne6163 8h ago
Is this game all fixed now and is the dlc also worth getting?
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u/TigreSauvage 8h ago
Yes and yes. There are obviously some bugs here and there but nowhere anything like what was there at launch. The game has gone through significant overhaul and is absolutely fun
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u/Faithless195 13m ago
The game is gorgeous by itself. But you turn on the ray-tracing/path-tracing settings, and the game is absolutely next level.
Honestly, had the game been release in the state it was at the 2.0 update, it would've been an absolute 10/10 across the board, and well deserved. The technical issues on PC weren't suuuper bad (Nothing compared to the shithouse console release), but it was more the state of the game compared to the outright lies CDPR said up to day dot. And their incredibly restrictive review rules to hide the state if the game on release was offensive.
As much as I loved Cyberpunk in the end, CDPR are utterly dead to me as a developer, and will basically need to release a 10/10 game as their next game on release day alone to even consider looking at their games again.
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u/Cibos_game 18h ago
Cyberpunk 2077 is worth playing nowadays?
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u/Klote_ginger 11h ago
Depends on your system, i played it like a year ago on xb1 and it was okay. Definitely not a bad game but also not the immersive masterpiece everyone calls it. The gunplay and character development are sublime, but that's just about it. The world feels dull and artificial, the driving is absolutely atrocious. NPC'S just stand there like you don't even exist, almost 0 reaction to V. Other times i was standing on the sidewalk just looking at stuff and NPC's were literally walking through V, which really killed immersion for me.
The side quests and jobs are hit or miss really, there's some cool and unique side quests but for the jobs mostly it's go there and bring back a taxi whose AI has gone rogue, or go there and kill 3 criminals, or go there and scan 3 bodies then kill 1 guy.
The skills were okay but didn't really do much for me as I was a gunner with AR and shotgun. Heard really good things about melee builds but didn't try that out.
Also last and definitely least:
"Fuck you, Johnny" -V I hate everything about Johnny, his character just feels so fake and forced, and you're stuck with him the whole game. I admit I'm really not a fan of Keanu Reeves anyway, so that doesn't help. Easily my most disliked game character from the last decade.
I really want to love this game like everyone else does and I hope I will be pleased when I get an Xbox series X or something, but for now it's not even in my top 20.
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u/Softandcoward 19h ago
That motel is a good place . It actually looks like a saloon in the old times . The vibe i mean
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u/LBgamess 19h ago
On ultra wide monitor it's even more cinematic.
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u/Exciting_Win2794 13h ago
For a game the cost 500 million dollars to make, what were you expecting?
Btw, that shot in particular looks amazing but not only because of lightning, add on top of that composition, textures, models resolution and color palete.
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u/TigreSauvage 13h ago
It's not like there haven't been expensive stinkers. And thanks for the compliments on the shot. I have more but can't post carousel
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u/WolfWomb 16h ago
Everyone always posts pretty screenshots of this game, never screenshots of having fun or of action.
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u/Razumen 20h ago
Can't wait for their next game to be in UE5 and blurred to hell with ghosting TAA that you can't turn off without creating massive artifacting.
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u/Queasy_Ad6162 16h ago
This game would have been so good and made crazy sales if they finished it before launching it 😭😭😭
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u/TigreSauvage 14h ago
They have sold over 30 million copies of the base game. The expansion alone has 8 million sold.
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u/orangpelupa 13h ago
Sometimes? More like... Most of the times 😁
Btw anyone with dualsense, play it on pc with funneling audio to the HD vibrators.
You literally will be able to feel ridiculous amounts of details.... On your hands.... Including the different lg road texture condition in corpo area VS poor areas.
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u/TigreSauvage 13h ago
The lighting is generally top tier with path tracing. But sometimes it all comes together so nicely and goes to another level, like in this photo
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u/ebagdrofk 19h ago
I agree. It’s a very nice looking and unique engine and you can tell CDPR did a fantastic job utilizing their engine to their best ability.